Dr Anthony Fauci defended controversial ‘gain of function’ research and said the benefits ‘outweigh’ the risks of a potential pandemic.
In a 2012 paper published in mBio, the nation’s top infectious disease expert discussed the research – which involves altering an organism or a disease to increase its development, transmissibility or range of hosts in can affect – regarding the highly infectious H5N1 flu virus.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), wrote the voluntary moratorium on gain-of-function research should be lifted due to the information that might be learned from these experiments.
‘In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?’ he wrote at the time.
‘Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.’
It comes as questions swirl over whether or not SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was undergoing gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, and whether the U.S. funded such research.
Neither Fauci or the NIAID immediately replied to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
Dr Anthony Fauci defended ‘gain of function’ experiments in a 2012 paper discussing the H5N1 flu virus and said the benefits ‘outweigh’ the risks. Pictured: Fauci answers a question from Republican Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul, May 11
There have been recent questions surrounding whether or not the coronavirus was being studied for ‘gain of function’ at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Pictured: A worker stands next to a cage with mice inside the P4 laboratory at the WIV, February 2017
In the paper, Fauci admitted there are concerns that a pandemic could be caused by less experienced scientists not well trained in gain-of-function research.
‘Putting aside the specter of bioterrorism for the moment, consider this hypothetical scenario: an important gain-of-function experiment involving a virus with serious pandemic potential is performed in a well-regulated, world-class laboratory by experienced investigators,’ he wrote.
‘But the information from the experiment is then used by another scientist who does not have the same training and facilities and is not subject to the same regulation.’
Fauci argued that it is more likely for pandemic to occur in nature, with a virus that infects animals mutating and then spreading to humans.
China claims that the virus originated in bats before it jumped to humans via an ‘intermediary animal.’
However, there has been speculation the pathogen may have leaked from the WIV after a report this week revealed three researchers from the lab sought care for the illness, months before the virus spread to the broader population.
Some have speculated that scientists at the lab were performing gain-of-function research when the virus escaped.
In a Senate panel on Wednesday, Fauci defended allocating $600,000 to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then paid the WIV to study the risk that bat coronaviruses could infect humans.
He testified that scientists in Wuhan were not supposed to be doing gain of function experiments and that he had seen the results of the studies that had been conducted and none were of this variety.
But Republican Senator John Kennedy suggested those at the Wuhan lab could have used U.S. taxpayer money on secret experiments.
Fauci admitted there are concerns if less experience scientists perform the experiments, but said a pandemic is most likely to occur ‘in nature’. Pictured: Fauci appears before a House committee to discuss the budget
Fauci admitted there is no way to know if ‘gain of function’ experiments on bat coronaviruses were being performed using U.S. tax dollars.
‘There’s no way of guaranteeing that,’ he testified at a hearing before the Appropriations Committee.
‘But in our experience with grantees, including Chinese grantees, which we have had interactions with for a very long period of time – they are very competent, trustworthy scientists.’
On Wednesday, the White House released a statement saying U.S. intelligence agencies couldn’t state for certain the origin of that coronavirus.
The Biden administration is now giving intelligence agencies 90 days to dig in and come up with a report that has a more definitive answer.
US liberal media’s Covid U-turn: A year after TRASHING theory that COVID originated from a Wuhan lab because Trump supported the suggestion – America’s woke mainstream news outlets suddenly start asking if it’s true!
By Harriet Alexander for DailyMail.com
The liberal media have finally conceded that COVID-19 may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory – after a year spent ridiculing the suggestion.
The first fatality from COVID-19 was reported by Chinese state media on January 11, 2020, when a 61-year-old man who was a regular customer at a market in Wuhan died. The first confirmed case in the United States was 10 days later, when a man returned to Washington state from Wuhan.
Within a week, on January 26, 2020, the first article blaming the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the outbreak was published, in The Washington Times. Yet most mainstream media disputed the claims, dismissing them outright or even decrying them as racist.
When Donald Trump, on May 1, 2020, said he had ‘a high degree of confidence’ that the virus escaped from a lab, the New York Times, CNN, and NPR were quick to mock his comments.
CNN, which by the end of the Trump administration was brazen in its hostility to the president and his advisors, was almost gleeful in its mockery of the idea that the virus could have come from a laboratory.
The Washington Post, New York Times, and NPR were equally dismissive of suggestions that the virus could have come from a laboratory.
The Washington Post published a fact checker piece on May 25 saying the theory had ‘suddenly’ become credible after it was repeatedly brought up. It came after a year of naysaying from the liberal media who never accepted that it might be true
There is outrage over the fact that for the last year, the theory has been widely discredited by the media in America when it may explain the entire pandemic
Some outlets, such as the Huffington Post, even branded any suggestion the virus could have stemmed from a lab as a ‘toxic conspiracy theory.’
Few were able to suggest that COVID-19 could have stemmed from a research facility without backlash but that didn’t stop some media, including the Daily Mail, from questioning the narrative.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was also clear in demanding an investigation into whether it could have escaped from the lab.
Finally, in the past few months, came the first signs that opinion was beginning to change.
In January, a World Health Organization (WHO) report only served to raise more questions after Beijing strictly controlled an on-site visit and who the researchers compiling the report spoke to. The WHO team was only allowed three hours inside the Wuhan lab and was unable to examine any of the Wuhan institute’s safety logs or records of testing on its staff.
China’s actions led to Biden’s White House calling for greater transparency.
Even Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said that the visit was inconclusive, adding that ‘all hypotheses are open’ and warranted future study.
By May 11, the leading public health expert in the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci, had accepted that the idea of the virus escaping from a lab had been too quickly dismissed.
Asked whether the virus originated naturally, Fauci replied that he wants to look closer into the matter.
‘I am not convinced about that,’ he said. ‘I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened.
‘Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.’
Fauci’s revelation came as a shock to many on the left who have accepted China’s narrative that coronavirus spread from a wet market since the virus first emerged.
Of course, China continues to insist that COVID-19 did not originate in the Wuhan lab.
‘The U.S. keeps concocting inconsistent claims and clamoring to investigate labs in Wuhan,’ China’s foreign ministry said in a written statement on May 24. This fully shows that some people in the U.S. don’t care about facts and truth.’
CNN
On May 1, 2020, CNN reported that Trump had ‘contradicted’ the intel community by claiming to have seen evidence the virus came from a lab.
‘President Donald Trump contradicted a rare on-the-record statement from his own intelligence community by claiming Thursday that he has seen evidence that gives him a “high degree of confidence” the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to back up his assertion.
‘The comments undercut a public statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued just hours earlier which stated no such assessment has been made and continues to “rigorously examine” whether the outbreak “began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
“Yes, I have,” Trump said when asked whether he’s seen evidence that would suggest the virus originated in the lab. Later, asked why he was confident in that assessment, Trump demurred.
“I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that,” the report read.
Then on May 5, 2020, their editor-at-large Chris Cillizza wrote a scathing attack on the suggestion, entitled: Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump’s theory on the origins of the coronavirus.
MAY 1 2020: On May 1, 2020, CNN reported that Trump had ‘contradicted’ the intel community by claiming to have seen evidence the virus came from a lab. They pointed to how rare it was for the intelligence community to make a statement
MAY 5 2020: Chris Cillizza wrote an opinion piece saying Fauci had ‘crushed Trump’s theory’ about the origins of the virus
OCTOBER 2020: CNN published another report about how the theory came from a ‘shoddy’ paper that was backed by Bannon. It claimed there was no proof whatsoever behind the theory